Today we launched Closing the Gap: TASC’s Proposals for a More Equitable Budget.
Our basic message is that there is a risk of major, negative and long-lasting social harm from the Government's target of another €8.6 billion of tax and cuts (including €3.5 billion to be announced in December) along the same lines as previous budgets. We need to change direction and look at tax reform and a plan to achieve sustainable Western European standards of public services, underpinned by major tax reform to pay for them.
We have chosen costed measures (on the basis of available data from official sources) to put together a package of proposals that meet the Government's target for €3.5 billion in the most jobs-friendly, egalitarian way possible, with 80 per cent coming from tax reform.
Our major prooosals include:
- An annual 0.35 per cent residential property tax, with an 'ability to pay' system of deferred payment. Our figures assume a 25 per cent rate of deferrals;
- Changes to CAT
- Substantial reform of pension tax reliefs
- Excise on economic 'bads' such as saturated fat, salt, added sugar
- Increasing carbon tax to €25 per tonne of CO2
As an imperative, we argue that no measures in Budget 2013 should reduce social transfers or public service supports to low income and vulnerable groups.
3 comments:
"Our major proposals include:
- An annual 0.35 per cent residential property tax, with an 'ability to pay' system of deferred payment. Our figures assume a 25 per cent rate of deferrals;"
How about a Transaction Tax: (ie VAT on any sale or transfer of land or property? NO EXCEPTIONS!
What you proposing is just another tax on labour income - not private property. If you want to tax rental and non labour incomes, say so.
"- Substantial reform of pension tax reliefs"
How about ZERO tax reliefs on ANYTHING! Non-taxpayers get no reliefs. What you are proposing is an increase in inequity! Teriffic stuff - for socialists!
"- Excise on economic 'bads' such as saturated fat, salt, added sugar"
Please grow up. That is Daddy State stuff. Let folk do what they wish - its only their funeral after-all. Pathetic.
Look, the 'War on Drugs' has been a heroic and highly successful failure. Nicotine and alcohol addictions have not gone away. Probhition was/is successful???
"- Increasing carbon tax to €25 per tonne of CO2."
Great. Smash the economy across the shins with a caman then knee it in the testicles. Bloody marvellous. Abolish vehicle registration and VRT replace with a fuel consumption tax - and no sector can get any rebate whatsoever. Just make sure your far enough away from Mick O'Leary or he might just give you a clout across the ears.
Please confirm you are not a bunch of neo-con robots. You sure seem to be such. Very poor stuff.
"we argue that no measures in Budget 2013 should reduce social transfers or public service supports to low income and vulnerable groups."
How about you insist (and riot if required) to get Gov to introduce a new tax code ASAP and tax high incomes at 85% - with no exceptions. Every able-bodied citizen is legally obliged (jail otherwise) to lodge an annual tax-return. Tax exiles have their Irish passports cancelled.
There is no equitable way to decrease the social and income inequities in our society without severe political upheavals. Do you really want to go there? Do you have the stomach for that? I doubt both.
Dream on lads.
For anyone here with an interest in reducing the impact of these unavoidable fiscal adjustments on all citizens - and particularly on those least able to bear the burden - this:
http://www.dublineconomics.com/papers/energy.pdf
is a link to the paper I presented at the Dublin Economics Workshop annual economic conference a fortnight ago in Galway.
It shows that the ESB has been gouging, and continues to gouge, an average of €200 million a year from final consumers – and that Bord Gais is gouging an amount close to €100 million a year. This is an implicit, regressive, deadweight ‘financing tax’ that is placing an unnecessary and excessive burden on electricity and gas consumers (i.e., all citizens) and on the economy at a time of severe economic pressure.
I have brought this to attention of the Oireachtas sub-Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, they will do with it.
So TASC proposes some reforms (read increases) of PRSI.
Yet somehow, miraculously, the most obvious and glaring anomaly in the entire PRSI system somehow escaped your attention!
How could this oversight have possibly occurred?
Let me suggest some hands-on research that may reveal all if you keep your eye peeled ...
Any TASC members on the public payroll since 1994, have a look at your last payslip. Confirm your suspicions by looking at the payslip before. Am I getting warm yet?
Then any TASC members on public payroll since sometime after 1994, compare your payscale to one of your older colleagues. Notice how a benevolent little fairy (known as the Irish taxpayer) has been paying PRSI on your behalf for all these years (in the form of a differential payscale designed to offset your PRSI laibility).
Wow! Insights are made of such everyday observations!
Now, for extra credit, can anyone suggest a reform of the PRSI system that would yield very substantial revenue, while addressing a glaring inequality?
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